News stories from Friday May 5, 1978

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

Aldo Moro's "death sentence" was being carried out, his kidnappers, the Red Brigades, said because the Italian government had failed to give a positive response to the terrorists' demands for an exchange of prisoners. But the message, distributed simultaneously to newspapers in Rome, Milan, Genoa and Turin, fell short of saying that the former Prime Minister of Italy had actually been killed. [New York Times] A drop in the unemployment rate in April to 6 percent, its lowest in three and a half years, was reported by the Labor Department. Total employment, meanwhile, continued to expand sharply. The report was received with mixed feelings. Economists said that the figures were cheering, but at a congressional hearing on the report two key senators, Lloyd Bentsen and William Proxmire, expressed concern that steeply rising prices combined with recent declines in worker productivity might indicate that expansion of employment was ending and a new recession was approaching. [New York Times] President Carter attacked the organized medical profession, saying it was the major obstacle to better health care in this country, a day after he accused the legal profession of contributing heavily to unequal justice. He told a town meeting of 1,700 persons in Spokane that when doctors become members of the American Medical Association, "their interest is to protect the interests, not of patients, but of doctors." He had earlier received a roaring welcome from a crowd of 20,000 when he arrived in Spokane, where he completed a three-day tour of Western states in which his new, forceful style was apparent. [New York Times] Stock prices rose moderately in heavy trading, ending their drops of the previous three sessions. When Wall Street heard that the national unemployment rate had declined last month, the Dow Jones industrial average quickly gained almost 9 points, but its total gain at the closing as 4.68 points and the final average was 829.09. [New York Times] Rising interest rates will affect home buyers, people who build and others dependent on commercial loans. Major savings and loan associations in California raised their rates on single-family home mortgage loans to 10 percent from 9¾ percent, the highest their rate has been since 1974, when it was 11 percent. Meanwhile, the Bank of America and Citibank, the country's largest commercial banks, raised their prime rates, their minimum interest on corporate loans, to 8¼ percent from 8 percent. The trend, now industry-wide, started a week ago when Chase Manhattan raised its rate. [New York Times] City College of New York removed a dean who had criticized open admissions, "affirmative action" hiring policies, tenure and faculty unionism as "contributions to mediocrity." The dean, Theodore Gross, head of the division of humanities, stated his views in an article titled "How to Kill a Campus" in the Feb.. 4, 1978, issue of The Saturday Review. He will leave at the end of this semester. [New York Times] Trigger prices for imported steel are to be revised upward in the third quarter, the Treasury Department said, to make domestic steel products more competitive. The trigger-price system was instituted by the Treasury in February to prevent importers from dumping steel on the American market. If importers bring in steel below the trigger prices, they risk an investigation by the Treasury. [New York Times] Checks might bounce less often. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation voted to allow the banks under its charge -- almost 9,000 state-chartered commercial and savings banks -- to offer customers automatic transfer of funds from sayings to checking accounts to cover overdrafts, The Federal Reserve Board on Monday approved a similar transfer of funds for commercial banks. [New York Times] Out-of-state tourists are the prey of swindling "gas" station operators in Georgia. Slashed tires and sabotaged batteries, shock absorbers and alternators are so common, especially along I-75, known as "ripoff road," that officials in Florida and Michigan have issued warnings to motorists traveling through Georgia, usually on their way to Florida, to beware of shady station operators. [New York Times] The right of American Jews to express dissent from Israeli policies was defended by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but he urged them to consider whether public dissent would weaken Israel's negotiating position. Mr. Begin made his remarks in New York in response to a question at a meeting of leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The meeting was held at Gracie Mansion, where Mr. Begin is staying. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 829.09 (+4.68, +0.57%)
S&P Composite: 96.53 (+0.60, +0.63%)
Arms Index: 0.58

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,005	29.48
Declines	496	8.39
Unchanged	409	4.81
Total Volume		42.68

* in millions of shares

Arms Index is the ratio of volume per declining issue to volume per advancing issue; a figure below 1.0 is bullish.

Market Index Trends
Date	DJIA	S&P	Volume*
May 4, 1978	824.41	95.93	37.52
May 3, 1978	828.83	96.26	37.60
May 2, 1978	840.18	97.25	41.40
May 1, 1978	844.33	97.67	37.02
April 28, 1978	837.32	96.83	32.85
April 27, 1978	826.92	95.86	35.47
April 26, 1978	836.97	96.82	44.45
April 25, 1978	833.59	96.64	55.80
April 24, 1978	826.06	95.77	34.52
April 21, 1978	812.80	94.34	31.54